iRepair: Mac OS X freeware for setting/fixing permissions on files and folders

Originally downloaded March 27, 2006. Not sure what this can do that I can’t do with the Get Info screen, but it’s worthwhle taking a peek to see!

Update 4/2/07. As it turns out, there’s not much to see here. This is another piece of software that was created and then abandoned… but at least it’s freeware! If iRepair could do what it claimed, it could possibly provide some value added over the Finder’s native tool, because sometimes you’d like to apply permission settings to an entire folder and all of its files and subfolders, but Finder doesn’t give you the option. iRepair does.

p:Unfortunately, though it has a nice interface for doing it, iRepair doesn’t work as advertised. In half a dozen trials today, I got iRepair to work only once. I tried to discern a pattern to the one success, but found none. It’s possible that iRepair works on file systems that have a more traditional setup… in other words, ones that don’t utilize symbolic links where actual folders usually are. But that’s no excuse… it’s easy enough to get Mac apps to follow symbolic links, if you know it’s a requirement. iRepair probably just didn’t go through much user testing. However, my idea that symbolic links may be tripping it up is pure speculation… I haven’t had the time to test the theory. If anyone does and would like to send in test data, I’ll be happy to amend this. If the developer reads this review, I also invite you to let me know if you revise the software, and I’ll test it again sometime.

Version as tested: 1.0.5.